All attempts to prove thatStar Wars: The Last Jedifailed spectacularly really just make it more successful. The film had one of the most profitable opening weekends of all time. During its worldwide theatrical run, it made well over a billion dollars. Critics praised the movie more than just about any other installment in the franchise. And four years after its release,The Last Jediis still the most talked-aboutStar Warsproperty.
How is it that a movie achieving every standard metric of success is still so often thought a failure? A small but vocal portion of theStar Warsfandom has loathedThe Last Jedisince its release. They have spent years attacking the film and urging Disney to erase it from history, to redo the entire sequel trilogy if necessary.
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In some ways, those fans are right aboutThe Last Jedi. As a transformative installment in theStar Warscanon, the film has failed. The life it breathed into a galaxy far, far away has been sucked back out byThe Rise of Skywalker. Disney worked to give the angriest fans everything they wanted. In doing so they tookthe bestStar Warsfilm sinceThe Empire Strikes Backand turned it into a failure.
Going In With No Plan
Disney started theStar Warssequel trilogy half-cocked. Afterpurchasing Lucasfilm in 2012 for an insane amount of money, Disney felt the need to generate a quick return on their investment. A sequel trilogy seemed the best option, as fans had been waiting for one since before the disastrous prequels. George Lucas had scripts ready for the sequels, butLucas is an uneven film writer at best,so the studio decided to move in their own direction.
After leaving Lucas by the wayside, Disney bizarrely split their focus on theStar Warssequels. They hired J.J. Abrams to write and direct what would becomeThe Force Awakens. However, Disney didn’t approach Abrams about handling the rest of the trilogy untilafter production onThe Force Awakenshad started. He turned them down, so Disney hired Rian Johnson to writeThe Last JedibeforeThe Force Awakenswas even finished.
Of course, spontaneously produced series have worked in the past. WhenStar Warscame to theaters in 1977, sequels hadn’t been planned.Star Warswasn’t already a global phenomenon at the time, either. When Disney began planning in 2012, they knew they were making a trilogy of films.
WhatThe Last JediTried
When Rian Johnson started work onThe Last Jedi, he had access to Abrams’s script forThe Force Awakensand not much else. Though of course, the studio had final say on everything Johnson did, Disney gave him total creative control over the second installment in their trilogy. Thanks toAbrams’s “mystery box” storytelling style, Johnson had plenty of loose plot threads and no ideas which ones would become important to fans after they sawThe Force Awakens.
What Johnson noticed aboutThe Force Awakenswas that it set up a story doomed to repeat the exact same beats as the original trilogy. A young, Force-sensitive kid fights against an evil galactic empire with only the advice of an older generation, who’s fought this fight before, to guide her. UnlessThe Last Jedimade some drastic changes, theStar Warssequels would become little more than a money-grabbing re-hash of a once-loved series.
Johnson focused on what he found most interesting aboutThe Force Awakensand made moves to forceStar Warsto evolve. Abrams had createdclear surrogates for the Emperor and Darth Vaderwith Snoke and Kylo Ren. So Johnson had Ren kill Snoke and take control of the galaxy. Abrams had set up the “mystery” of Rey’s parentage in a way that screamed “dramatic reveal incoming.” So Johnson revealed that she came from no one in particular and would truly rise from nothing to become a galactic hero. Abrams reinstated an evil galactic empire but didn’t address how past Rebels like Han and Leia felt about losing the galaxy a second time. So Johnson played out the reality of the loss with Luke Skywalker.
Rian Johnson struggled to pushStar Warsforward while also addressing the various plots Abrams had begun. Some characters,like Finn and Poe Dameron, were woefully downgradedto background cast members. As a whole, though,The Last Jediwas wildly inventive and gaveStar Warsthe chance to feel new again. Then some fans revolted.
WhatThe Rise of SkywalkerDid
Between the release ofThe Force AwakensandThe Last Jedi, fans became incredibly invested in tearing apart Abrams’s film and theorizing what reveals were coming. They obsessed over Rey’s parents and wrote endless forum posts debating Snoke’s origin and motives. WhenThe Last Jedithwarted their theories and refused to be a by-the-numbersStar Warsmovie, they weren’t willing to accept it.
Disney panicked. They hired Colin Trevorrow to finish the trilogy. He wrote several drafts of ascript calledDuel of the Fatesbefore Kathleen Kennedy fired him. At this point, Disney’s primary focus became placating fans. The little effort they’d been putting into legitimate storytelling went away entirely.
Abrams came back to finish out the trilogy withThe Rise of Skywalker. He and Disney decided to undo most of what Johnson had done inThe Last Jedi. To replace Snoke, they resurrected the original trilogy’s Emperor with a single sentence in the title crawl. To please fans upset by the reveal of Rey’s parents, they created a new reveal, making her the Emperor’s granddaughter. Needless to say, these sudden shifts felt out-of-place and unearned.
Worse than the film’s ret-conning was its treatment of the side characters. IfThe Last Jediunder-served Finn and Poe,The Rise of Skywalkerabandoned thementirely. The only semblance of an arc for Finn is that he has something important to tell Rey. The film never lets them have the conversation and doesn’t even address what it is he needs to say.
Room for Hope
The Rise of Skywalkerfeels almost unrelated to the films that precede it. It reopens and rewrites plot threads thatThe Last Jedihad tied off. Despite Abrams himself making the film, it entirely forgets about any loose threads still hanging fromThe Force Awakens. It didn’t have to be this way. Disney could have made even a rough plan for their series. They could have committed to what Johnson did withThe Last Jedi.Instead, they surrendered to the angriest minority of theStar Warsfandom. Instead, they strove blindly forward, entirely motivated by profit margins, and ruined the trilogy they created.
There’s hope in that the story isn’t over. There will be moreStar Wars, on the big and small screens. There might even be another trilogy,this time lead entirely by Rian Johnson. But for now,Star Warsfans must live with the disappointment.
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